We have been running Ecobee for over four years at our place.
We have a fairly complicated setup due to a Geo Thermal heating
system, forced air and in floor heat, and two zones in the
house. We also have a third, independent fan coil HVAC unit in
the garage that heats and cools the garage. What we have found
over the years is that the thermostats are very easy to set up
as mentioned earlier in this thread. However, the real
challenge is the wiring compatibility between your HVAC control
equipment and the thermostat. Commercial may be different, but I
think it is basically the same as residential and if each
thermostat controls a unique piece of HVAC, things are likely
going to be pretty simple. However, if each thermostat
controls a zone on a shared piece of HVAC, or two or three
thermostats control a single HVAC, you need to make sure you
know what thermostat wiring your zone controller equipment is
looking for. Also, the zone controller can control things like
heat stages if you have more than one stage (Geo is very well
know for this, but other heat pump HVAC equipment also have more
than one stage) or whether you want the thermostat to control
stages. Most smart thermostats like Ecobee and Nest are fully
capable of controlling stages. Once you know that you have the
correct wiring compatibility (for example we eventually switched
our zone controller because it wanted the old mechanical
thermostat with separate O and B wiring configuration),
configuring the Ecobee is pretty simple. You will want to set
a master thermostat so that you don’t have one thermo in heat
mode and one in cooling mode, they will just fight each other.
This is quite straight forward when using most zone controllers,
you simply hook the one you want to be the master mode thermo to
the correct connectors on the zone controller. If each thermo is
controlling unique and separate HVAC equipment, this would have
to be done through the Ecobee or Nest account, (IE configured in
the thermo itself).
No matter what, take pictures of how things are hooked up before
starting, and don’t throw anything away until well after you are
convinced it is working well. In fact, I would recommend going
through a heating and cooling season before getting rid of
anything depending on where you are at. Also, most HVAC
professionals will know one or two automation platforms, but
won’t want to get involved with ones they aren’t familiar
with. They can waste way too much time figuring out the
nuances of some small problems. Assume that if you start this
project, you will be on your own, but I wouldn’t let that steer
you away from trying. Simple things like a volt meter to test
which wire is energized on heat and cool calls from the thermo
go a long way into figuring out how things are working.
Once you deal with the wiring, it works very well and you can
get a some great reporting from the thermostat for things like
how long did the thermo call for heat before the call was
satisfied, how long did it run in each stage, how long did it
run compared to outside temps, etc.
Let me know if you want more specifics, I ended up getting much
deeper in the weeds than I expected on this when putting in the
Geo Thermal, but glad that I spent the time as it works really
well.
Regards,
David Coudron
*From:* AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of * Jason McKemie
*Sent:* Monday, November 25, 2019 11:41 PM
*To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Building automation
The basic setup with nest is just logging the devices into your
account. Most of the automation is done automatically,
obviously there is configuration you can change, but it isn't
necessary for operation.
On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 11:12 PM CBB - Jay Fuller
<[email protected]> wrote:
Learn more...i guess lol
Sent from my smartphone
----- Reply message -----
From: "Jason McKemie" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]>
Subject: [AFMUG] Building automation
Date: Mon, Nov 25, 2019 10:08 PM
What are you wanting to do? It's dead simple with nest.
On Monday, November 25, 2019, CBB - Jay Fuller
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Any good YouTube videos to get started on home
automation with nest?
Sent from my smartphone
----- Reply message -----
From: "Darin Steffl" <[email protected]>
To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [AFMUG] Building automation
Date: Mon, Nov 25, 2019 8:32 PM
I'm a Nest fan but haven't used ecobee. Google owns nest
and ecobee would be the one to be acquired between these
two.
Also, $5600 seems very high for 11 thermostats. Are
there more parts to it that I'm missing?
On Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 7:56 PM Nate Burke
<[email protected]> wrote:
One of the young whippersnappers at an organization
I work with is all
gung-ho on replacing all 11 thermostats in the
building (Boiler with
multiple zones, and multiple RTU's) with ecobee
thermostats that can be
remotely controlled and scheduled. Total price for
everything is
running about $5600 (parts only) He's worked with
ecobee before, so he
really likes it.
Has anyone worked with ecobee before? Are there
similar systems to
compare it to? The Goal is to allow the office to
control/schedule the
thermostats based on room usage. We found one room
that was set to 90
over the weekend last week. I'm concerned that
ecobee would be bought,
merged into someone else, and you suddenly have nice
wall mounted
thermostats that can't be remotely managed anymore
because the cloud
went away.
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